Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Guide to Writing About Greece For People Who Can’t Bear To Write About Greece

Kedrosky nails it. From Infectious Greed:

The Greece debt debacle has, it feels like, being going on for most of my adult life. Fine, it may only be a year or so, but it feels much, much longer. I’m way past the point where saying anything else about it is bearable, so, herewith, a Guide to Writing About Greece For People Who Can’t Bear to Write About Greece. [-]

Talk about the U.S. instead. For full contrarian points, say it’s much worse/better/different than Greece.

Say that the market has already discounted the Greece news, whatever it is, so it doesn’t matter.

Tie it all to which banks are being bailed out, and tie that, in turn, back to everything you said about bank bailouts in 2007-8. Feign righteous indignation, or world-weariness, or both, depending on your particular bent....MORE

The Financial Times' Alan Beattie wrote this bit of brilliance last year for the G8 meeting. His friend Gideon Rachman duly posted it on his FT Rachmanblog. I am reposting it in full to bookmark for future reference:

...Alan then forwarded me a generic column on international institutions that he has written. It really says it all - and I think I may simply reproduce it, every year, round about G8 time.
It goes as follows:

By reporters everywhere

An ineffectual international organisation yesterday issued a stark warning about a situation it has absolutely no power to change, the latest in a series of self-serving interventions by toothless intergovernmental bodies.

“We are seriously concerned about this most serious outbreak of seriousness,” said the head of the institution, either a former minister from a developing country or a mid-level European or American bureaucrat.

“This is a wake-up call to the world. They must take on board the vital message that my organisation exists.”

The director of the body, based in one of New York, Washington or an agreeable Western European city, was speaking at its annual conference...